While addressing students Thursday morning at an event at Howard University, Jackson was quoted in Energy and Environment Daily saying, “In their [the coal industry] entire history -- 50, 60, 70 years, or even 30 ... they never found the time or the reason to clean up their act. They're literally on life support. And the people keeping them on life support are all of us.”
Jackson went on to lambast McKinley’s bipartisan coal ash legislation, saying, “That struck me as kind of a way of thinking about what's going on right now inside the beltway…So that's where we are. We're protecting the coal ash from the people rather then protecting the people from the coal ash.”